The Mythology of All Races, Vol. 11: Latin-American

by Hartley Burr Alexander

The origin of so peculiar a reckoning as the Tonalamatl is one of the puzzles of Americanist studies. Effort has been made to connect it with lunar movements, but no astronomical period corresponds with it. Again, it has been pointed out that the two hundred and sixty days of the Tonalamatl approximate the period of gestation, and in view of its use, for divinations and horoscopic forecasts, this is not impossible as an explanation of its origin. The obvious fact that it expresses the cycle of coincidence of the twenty day-signs and thirteen numerals only carries the puzzle back to the origination of the numeration, with its anomalous thirteen—for which, as a significant number, no more satisfactory astronomical reason has been suggested than León y Gama's, that it represents half of the period of the moon's visibility. In myth the invention of the Tonalamatl is ascribed to Cipactonal and Oxomoco (in whom Señor Robelo sees the personification of Day and Night), and again to Quetzalcoatl. At his immolation the heart of Quetzalcoatl, it will be recalled, flew upward to become the Morning Star, and in special degree the god is associated with this star. "They said that Quetzalcoatl died when the star became visible, and henceforward they called him Tlauizcalpantecutli, 'Lord of the Dawn.' They said that when he died he was invisible for four days; they said he wandered in the underworld, and for four days more he was bone. Not until eight days were past did the great star appear. Quetzalcoatl then ascended the throne as god." One of the early writers, Ramon y Zamora, states that the Tonalamatl was determined by the Mexicans as the period during which Venus is visible as the evening star; and Förstemann discovered representations of the Venus-year of five hundred and eighty-four days divided into periods of ninety, two hundred and fifty, eight, and two hundred and thirty-six days, which he estimated to represent respectively the period of Venus's invisibility during superior conjunction (ninety days), of its visibility as evening star (two hundred and fifty days), of its invisibility during inferior conjunction (eight days), and of its visibility as morning star (two hundred and thirty-six days). The near correspondence of the period of two hundred and fifty days with the Tonalamatl, coupled with the identity of the eight days' invisibility with the period of Quetzalcoatl's wandering and lying dead in the underworld, which was followed by his ascension to the throne of the eastern heaven, as related in the myth, give plausibility to the traditions which associate the formation of the Tonalamatl with the Venus-period. Seler suggests—and this is perhaps the best explanation yet offered—that the Tonalamatl is the product of an indirect association of the solar year (three hundred and sixty-five days) and of the Venus-period (five hundred and eighty-four days), for the least common multiple of the numbers of days in these two periods is twenty-nine hundred and twenty days, equal to eight solar years and five Venus years; in associating the two, he says, the inventors of the calendar lighted upon the number thirteen (8 + 5), and hence upon the Tonalamatl of two hundred and sixty days. If this be the case, the belief in thirteen heavens and thirteen hours of the day would be derivative from temporal rather than spatial observations, from astronomy rather than cosmography. A somewhat analogous association might be offered in connexion with the nine of the heavens and the nine of the hours of the night; for just as there are four signs that always recur as the designations of the solar years, so for the Venus-period there are five (since five hundred and eighty-four divided by twenty leaves four as divisor of the signs), and the sum of these is nine.

The signs which inaugurate the Venus periods are Cipactli ("Crocodile"), Coatl ("Snake"), Atl ("Water"), Acatl ("Reed"), and Olin ("Motion"). But here again the numerals enter in to complicate the series, so that while the day-signs which inaugurate the Venus-periods recur in groups of five, they do not recur with the same numeral until the lapse of thirteen times five periods. This great cycle of Venus-days, comprising sixty-five repetitions of the apparent course of the planet, is also a common multiple of the solar year and of the Tonalamatl, comprising one hundred and four of the former and one hundred and forty-six of the latter. Thus it was that at the end of one hundred and four years of three hundred and sixty-five days the same sign and number-series recurred in the three great units of the Aztec calendar. When it is remembered that prognostics were to be drawn not merely from the complex relations of the signs to their place in each of the three time-units, with their respective elaborations into cycles; but from their further relations with the regions of the upper and lower worlds, and also from the numerals, which had good and evil values of their own, it will be seen that the Mexican priests were in possession of a fount of craft not second to that of the astrologers of the Old World.

That so complex a system could easily give rise to error is evident, and it is probable that, as tradition asserts, from time to time corrections were made, serving as the inauguration of new "Suns" or as new "inventions" of time. It may even be that the "Suns" of the cosmogonic myths are reminiscences of calendric corrections, and it is at least a striking coincidence that the traditions of these "Suns" make them four in number, like the year-signs, or five in number, like the Venus-signs. The latter series, too, is distinctly cosmogonic in symbolism—Crocodile suggests the creation from a fish-like monster; Snake, the falling heavens; Water, the "Water-Sun" and the deluge; Reed (the fire-maker), the Sun of Fire; Motion, the Sun of Wind, or perhaps the Earthquake. But whatever be the value of these symbolisms, it is certain that the Mexicans themselves associated perilous times and cataclysmic changes with the rounding out of their cycles.

IV. LEGENDARY HISTORY

The cosmogonic and calendric cycles (intimately associated) profoundly influenced the Mexican conception of history. Orderly arrangement of time is as essential to an advancing civilization as the ordering of space, and it is natural for the human imagination to form all of its temporal conceptions into a single dramatic unity—a World Drama, with its Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Judgement; or a Cosmic Evolution from Nebula to Solar System, and Solar System to Nebula. In the making, such cosmic dramas start from these roots: (1) Cosmogony and Theogony, for which there is no simpler image in nature than the creation of the Life of Day from the Chaos of Night at the command of the Lord of Light; (2) "Great Years," or calendric cycles, formed by calculations of the synodic periods of sun and moon and wandering stars, or, as in the curious American instance, mainly from simple day-counts influenced by a complex symbolism of numbers and by an awkward notation; (3) the recession of history, back through the period of record to that of racial reminiscence and of demigod founders and culture-heroes. Of these three elements, the first and third constitute the material, while the second becomes the form-giver—the measure of the duration of the acts and scenes of the drama, as it were—adding, however, on the material side, the portents and omens imaged in the stars.

The Mexican system of cosmic Suns is a capital example of the first element—each Sun introducing a creation or restoration, and each followed by an elemental destruction, while all are meted out in formal cycles. It is no matter for wonder that there are varying versions of the order and number of the cosmogonic cycles, nor that a nebulous and legendary history is varyingly fitted into the cyclic plan; for each political state and cultural centre tended to develop its own stories in connexion with its own records and traditions. Nevertheless, there is a broad scheme of historic events common to all the more advanced Nahuatlan peoples, the uniformity of which somewhat argues for its truly historic foundation. This is the legend which assigns to the plateau of Anahuac three successive dominations, that of the Toltec, that of the Chichimec nations, and that of the Aztec and their allies. Although the remote Toltec period is clouded in myth, archaeology tends to support the truth of the tales of legendary Tollan, at least to the extent of identifying the site of a city which for a long period had been the centre of a power that was, by Mexican standards, to be accounted civilized.

The general characters of Toltec civilization, as tradition shows it, are those recorded by Sahagun.[57] The Toltec were clever workmen in metals, pottery, jewellery, and fabrics, indeed, in all the industrial arts. They were notable builders, adorning the walls of their structures with skilful mosaic. They were magicians, astrologers, medicine-men, musicians, priests, inventors of writing, and creators of the calendar. They were mannerly men, and virtuous, and lying was unknown among them. But they were not warlike—and this was to be their ruin.

PLATE XV.

The temple of Xochicalco, partially restored. The relief band, of which a section is given for detail, shows a serpent; a human figure, doubtless a deity, is seated beneath one of the great coils. After photographs in the Peabody Museum.